Tawny Kitaen's finest pout movie has to be, without a doubt, this spooky honker was made in France and dubbed (badly) into English. I loved this silly thing, with Tawny runing around in various states of undress and looking like she just got out of bed from a long session with various large, buzzing implements.
The fight scenes with the suitably Amazonian bad girls in high heeled boots weren't half bad, either.
I first saw it at a DRIVE IN theatre, which goes to show how long ago it was. And Meat was actually fairly thin.
Damn, but this movie was funny. When the cop snorts the handful of Tide, thinking it's coke, and starts blowing bubbles, I just about peed myself.
And hey, Alice Cooper was magnificent.
The "Taken" Channel...
on
Taken?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I was just annoyed as all hell at the total usurpation of the entire channel for a two-week period for this damn mini-series.
When ABC runs a mini-series, they don't suspend every other show on their network for the duration -- they show all of their regular programming at their usual times, changing only necessary shows to open up slots for the mini-series.
But not the Sci-Fi^h^h^h^h^h^hTaken Channel! They removed EVERYTHING BUT "Taken" from the lineup and replaced every single show with the cheesiest movie they could find, as though any timeslot NOT devoted to showing episodes of "Taken" (OR "Roswell" retrospectives" were beamed directly to the Satellite of Love.
I found this maddening, to say the least. I would have liked to be able to turn on the channel at some other time during that two weeks and see something OTHER than "Taken", bad Roswell "in search of" take-offs, or MST3K fodder. At the very least, I would have liked to be able to watch Babylon 5...but that's a totally different complaint. They don't give a crap about any show the fans actually LIKE. (Like Farscape.)
But I digress...
Then there is the sheer level of saturation. They decided to give us the super-deluxe "phalanx-gun" treatment for the "Taken Experience", making absolutely certain that there was NO WAY IN HELL we could miss an episode except on purpose!
Each episode would be shown THREE TIMES in a row, then once again the next night, before the new episode, then all of the first week's episodes were shown AGAIN on Saturday and Sunday, just in case! Then they showed the WHOLE THING this weeekend, in case you missed the last two weeks!
I must admit that it *was* convenient one night, when I simply HAD to watch the 11PM showing due to an evening meeting that ran long, but I could have set my VCR if I had needed to. This was such overwhelming oversaturation, it approached the baroque.
I certainly hope the ratings were what they expected...because it seems to me that Vivendi placed an awful lot of hope on this mini-series. If it didn't generate what they expected, I expect next to hear reports of bankruptcy filings.
Maybe you should actually check it out before you draw a conclusion about it...
It's actually quite neat. It isn't like what you think. It sounds no more and no less like your average neighborhood repeater system, except that instead of just hearing people from 10-30 miles around you, you're hearing those people PLUS people from Australia and Winnipeg and England and Denver and Hawaii...and you can talk to them all on your handheld.
I've GOT my Extra, and it's damned hard to hit Australia on HF...but I talked to very nice gentleman in Perth on UHF over one of these links, and it was new and exciting and a whole lot of fun. I made a new friend, and I didn't use the Internet *myself*, I used my plain ole ham radio. The repeater used the Internet...but what's the difference between using the Internet to link or a long-distance 220mhz link, or a microwave link? After all, the Internet is being beamed via microwaves or satellites too! What do you think the phone lines travel on, ley lines?
I am a ham, and I ran into a situation where only one neighbor in an apartment complex (out of about 9) was complaining about interference, and he was complaining about his stereo, his computer speakers, his cordless phone, his clock radio...you name it. He said he was going to get me shut down if I didn't simply stop transmitting -- since I was transmitting, and "wasn't allowed to interfere", I had to *stop*.
This is a case of IANAL-syndrome biting someone in the tuchis. If he had bothered to READ the law (which I supplied, photocopied, with a pamphlet from various Amateur Radio sources), he would have seen that, since my radio was in good working order, properly radiating in the right bands, that he was S.O.L.
A ham is not responsible for consumer electronics picking up PRIMARY interference -- not spurious emissions -- because the device receiving it is considered to be MALFUNCTIONING if it is receiving signals outside it's intended band of operation. A cordless phone should receive signals ONLY in the cordless-phone bands, not ham bands. A stereo or clock-radio should only receive AM and FM broadcast. And computer speakers shouldn't receive ANY. If it is, it's NOT the transmitter's problem, it's the cheap-ass equipment manufacturer who thinks plastic is RF shielding that's at fault.
Oh, dear...Ramsey makes something that someone can MODIFY to do something illegal??? Heavens to Betsy! Whaddarewe gonna DOOOOO? Kits, schmits. Equipment is available for a song at auctions, fleamarkets, corporate sales, and sometimes even dumpsters that could not only put a pirate radio station on the air, but could also pirate cell phone communications, jam air-traffic control operations, or be turned into a SHF radio weapon that would subject people to way more than the safe level of high-frequency RF radiation...or someone could study a little bit of electronics and design their own gadgets. (BTW...there are magzines where you can get fully-assembled and tested FM radio stations. No need to modify a wireless mike kit.) The problem here isn't that Ramsey is selling kits. The problem is that knowledge is becoming dangerous to have. This is the true danger being perpetrated upon Ramsey, and upon US -- that sooner or later, the very knowledge in our heads is going to become a liability to someone important, and therefore, be subject to regulation. Amateur radio has to fight a constant battle to keep a hold of its precious RF spectrum. Huge chunks are being seized and auctioned off for cell-phones and baby monitors. With that spectrum goes the inventiveness and drive of the people who pioneered its use. Did you know, at one time not all that long ago, all wavelengths shorter than 200 meters -- from AM broadcast frequencies and up -- were given to Radio Amateurs because they were considered "useless"? No one could figure out what these "short waves" were good for, so they gave them to the hobbyists...who proved what they were good for, and then some. Once the hobbyists had shown how valuable it was, the spectrum got seized again, and parcelled out in smaller and smaller chunks. In WWI and WWII, Amateurs were banned from the airwaves -- ostensibly for security reasons. Then, following WWII, the Department of the Navy, who then controlled Amateur Radio activity because lots of Amateurs were used for overseas communicators, refused to allow the Amateurs back on the air. It took the better part of 2 years to convince the Navy to let the Amateurs go back to their radios. Now, Amateurs fly their own satellites -- designed by amateurs, built by amateurs, and launched with the aid of agencies with "waste space" they don't know how to fill effectively. Frequently, Amateur satellites are launched as "test payloads" for rockets that are not yet approved to launch "real payloads". Hobbyists of all sorts are given the scraps to play with, on the assumption that the scraps are worthless...then, when we turn those sow's ears into silk purses, our works are stolen^h^h^h^h^h^hplaced under protection and we are forbidden to "play" with important things again. Open Source is going to get hit with the same thing...as long as we were using silly little processors that no one could put to a "meaningful" use to make the home-PC equivalent of "Frogger", we weren't a threat...but now we're taking hobbyist time and energy and turning it into something that's shaking the global economy. That's dangerous. We're going to get our toys taken away from us, because we're "just hobbyists"...and we might mess up the now-valuable materials we were given as garbage just moments before. Ramsey made kits that encouraged hobbyists to take what was simple and relatively worthless and turn it into something useful. This is a dangerous idea to the powers that be. A piece of graphite pencil lead...an earphone...a piece of fence wire wrapped around an oatmeal box...and a razor blade...these "worthless" things once caused the German Army no end of trouble...as French partisans used them to make radio receivers on which to hear forbidden news of the outside world. Be careful, folks. The crackdown on "dangerous" ideas is looming. We need to start doing what we can to turn this tide. Vote new people in. Call our elected officials to task. Shift the balance of power. A place to start might be the Spectrum Preservation Act...which states that if the Goverment takes away a band of Amateur RF spectrum to sell, they must be given back equal spectrum elsewhere. Tell your Congressmen to support it. That's a start.
Would it be a help to the musicians if, say, the companies that produce MP3/whatever player software voluntarily put a little doojie in each program that would tally up the plays for a given song and send them to the equivalent of "Billboard"...and if concert venues used this information to book concerts and tours. If they're getting a lot of play, then people like them, and they be given the opportunity to do concerts based on that merit. It makes money for the band, money for the venue, and enjoyment for the audience. And it's based on an objective standard -- the number of times they're played. The exposure sites then would really be doing a good thing for the artists by letting them be seen, whether they SOLD anything or not. Maybe the "Billboard" thing could be a non-profit org on behalf of the artists, not a company that'll just end up being as greedy as any other. Let the artists go as high as how good they are will take them, I say. The money is in the concerts and tours, not the record sales. Not for the artists, at least. --- Rhi
They also have a "Mouse Remote" that is a bit of a talking dog, but still a cute idea. It has most of the functionality of the learning remote, (except learning, darn it!) a little rocker-disc, and two buttons on the back. Coupled with a little receiver on a serial port, this doojie will control work like a mouse from across the room. I say it's a talking dog because, even tho it works, seeing what you're doing on the screen from across the room is a bit of a stretch. I also have the learning remote, and it is WAY cool. There is supposedly a high-power IR emitter unit available for Palm that will snap onto the serial port...and software for using it as a remote that even flips the display so you can hold it with the emitter towards the screen and read it. I haven't seen it in person, but I have seen it mentioned on the Web somewhere. --- Lady ArdRhi
+~+~+~+~+~+~+
All disagreements boil down to "my orgasm is bigger than your orgasm". -- Solomon Short
Slashdot Mirror
Tawny Kitaen's finest pout movie has to be, without a doubt, this spooky honker was made in France and dubbed (badly) into English. I loved this silly thing, with Tawny runing around in various states of undress and looking like she just got out of bed from a long session with various large, buzzing implements.
The fight scenes with the suitably Amazonian bad girls in high heeled boots weren't half bad, either.
I have this gem on VHS.
I first saw it at a DRIVE IN theatre, which goes to show how long ago it was. And Meat was actually fairly thin.
Damn, but this movie was funny. When the cop snorts the handful of Tide, thinking it's coke, and starts blowing bubbles, I just about peed myself.
And hey, Alice Cooper was magnificent.
I was just annoyed as all hell at the total usurpation of the entire channel for a two-week period for this damn mini-series.
When ABC runs a mini-series, they don't suspend every other show on their network for the duration -- they show all of their regular programming at their usual times, changing only necessary shows to open up slots for the mini-series.
But not the Sci-Fi^h^h^h^h^h^hTaken Channel! They removed EVERYTHING BUT "Taken" from the lineup and replaced every single show with the cheesiest movie they could find, as though any timeslot NOT devoted to showing episodes of "Taken" (OR "Roswell" retrospectives" were beamed directly to the Satellite of Love.
I found this maddening, to say the least. I would have liked to be able to turn on the channel at some other time during that two weeks and see something OTHER than "Taken", bad Roswell "in search of" take-offs, or MST3K fodder. At the very least, I would have liked to be able to watch Babylon 5...but that's a totally different complaint. They don't give a crap about any show the fans actually LIKE. (Like Farscape.)
But I digress...
Then there is the sheer level of saturation. They decided to give us the super-deluxe "phalanx-gun" treatment for the "Taken Experience", making absolutely certain that there was NO WAY IN HELL we could miss an episode except on purpose!
Each episode would be shown THREE TIMES in a row, then once again the next night, before the new episode, then all of the first week's episodes were shown AGAIN on Saturday and Sunday, just in case! Then they showed the WHOLE THING this weeekend, in case you missed the last two weeks!
I must admit that it *was* convenient one night, when I simply HAD to watch the 11PM showing due to an evening meeting that ran long, but I could have set my VCR if I had needed to. This was such overwhelming oversaturation, it approached the baroque.
I certainly hope the ratings were what they expected...because it seems to me that Vivendi placed an awful lot of hope on this mini-series. If it didn't generate what they expected, I expect next to hear reports of bankruptcy filings.
---ArdRhi
Sic Biscuitus Disintegratum
*grinning like a loon*
Who is John Galt?
It's actually quite neat. It isn't like what you think. It sounds no more and no less like your average neighborhood repeater system, except that instead of just hearing people from 10-30 miles around you, you're hearing those people PLUS people from Australia and Winnipeg and England and Denver and Hawaii...and you can talk to them all on your handheld.
I've GOT my Extra, and it's damned hard to hit Australia on HF...but I talked to very nice gentleman in Perth on UHF over one of these links, and it was new and exciting and a whole lot of fun. I made a new friend, and I didn't use the Internet *myself*, I used my plain ole ham radio. The repeater used the Internet...but what's the difference between using the Internet to link or a long-distance 220mhz link, or a microwave link? After all, the Internet is being beamed via microwaves or satellites too! What do you think the phone lines travel on, ley lines?
I am a ham, and I ran into a situation where only one neighbor in an apartment complex (out of about 9) was complaining about interference, and he was complaining about his stereo, his computer speakers, his cordless phone, his clock radio...you name it. He said he was going to get me shut down if I didn't simply stop transmitting -- since I was transmitting, and "wasn't allowed to interfere", I had to *stop*.
This is a case of IANAL-syndrome biting someone in the tuchis. If he had bothered to READ the law (which I supplied, photocopied, with a pamphlet from various Amateur Radio sources), he would have seen that, since my radio was in good working order, properly radiating in the right bands, that he was S.O.L.
A ham is not responsible for consumer electronics picking up PRIMARY interference -- not spurious emissions -- because the device receiving it is considered to be MALFUNCTIONING if it is receiving signals outside it's intended band of operation. A cordless phone should receive signals ONLY in the cordless-phone bands, not ham bands. A stereo or clock-radio should only receive AM and FM broadcast. And computer speakers shouldn't receive ANY. If it is, it's NOT the transmitter's problem, it's the cheap-ass equipment manufacturer who thinks plastic is RF shielding that's at fault.
--- Gwen, KB3DVJ
Oh, dear...Ramsey makes something that someone can MODIFY to do something illegal??? Heavens to Betsy! Whaddarewe gonna DOOOOO? Kits, schmits. Equipment is available for a song at auctions, fleamarkets, corporate sales, and sometimes even dumpsters that could not only put a pirate radio station on the air, but could also pirate cell phone communications, jam air-traffic control operations, or be turned into a SHF radio weapon that would subject people to way more than the safe level of high-frequency RF radiation...or someone could study a little bit of electronics and design their own gadgets. (BTW...there are magzines where you can get fully-assembled and tested FM radio stations. No need to modify a wireless mike kit.) The problem here isn't that Ramsey is selling kits. The problem is that knowledge is becoming dangerous to have. This is the true danger being perpetrated upon Ramsey, and upon US -- that sooner or later, the very knowledge in our heads is going to become a liability to someone important, and therefore, be subject to regulation. Amateur radio has to fight a constant battle to keep a hold of its precious RF spectrum. Huge chunks are being seized and auctioned off for cell-phones and baby monitors. With that spectrum goes the inventiveness and drive of the people who pioneered its use. Did you know, at one time not all that long ago, all wavelengths shorter than 200 meters -- from AM broadcast frequencies and up -- were given to Radio Amateurs because they were considered "useless"? No one could figure out what these "short waves" were good for, so they gave them to the hobbyists...who proved what they were good for, and then some. Once the hobbyists had shown how valuable it was, the spectrum got seized again, and parcelled out in smaller and smaller chunks. In WWI and WWII, Amateurs were banned from the airwaves -- ostensibly for security reasons. Then, following WWII, the Department of the Navy, who then controlled Amateur Radio activity because lots of Amateurs were used for overseas communicators, refused to allow the Amateurs back on the air. It took the better part of 2 years to convince the Navy to let the Amateurs go back to their radios. Now, Amateurs fly their own satellites -- designed by amateurs, built by amateurs, and launched with the aid of agencies with "waste space" they don't know how to fill effectively. Frequently, Amateur satellites are launched as "test payloads" for rockets that are not yet approved to launch "real payloads". Hobbyists of all sorts are given the scraps to play with, on the assumption that the scraps are worthless...then, when we turn those sow's ears into silk purses, our works are stolen^h^h^h^h^h^hplaced under protection and we are forbidden to "play" with important things again. Open Source is going to get hit with the same thing...as long as we were using silly little processors that no one could put to a "meaningful" use to make the home-PC equivalent of "Frogger", we weren't a threat...but now we're taking hobbyist time and energy and turning it into something that's shaking the global economy. That's dangerous. We're going to get our toys taken away from us, because we're "just hobbyists"...and we might mess up the now-valuable materials we were given as garbage just moments before. Ramsey made kits that encouraged hobbyists to take what was simple and relatively worthless and turn it into something useful. This is a dangerous idea to the powers that be. A piece of graphite pencil lead...an earphone...a piece of fence wire wrapped around an oatmeal box...and a razor blade...these "worthless" things once caused the German Army no end of trouble...as French partisans used them to make radio receivers on which to hear forbidden news of the outside world. Be careful, folks. The crackdown on "dangerous" ideas is looming. We need to start doing what we can to turn this tide. Vote new people in. Call our elected officials to task. Shift the balance of power. A place to start might be the Spectrum Preservation Act...which states that if the Goverment takes away a band of Amateur RF spectrum to sell, they must be given back equal spectrum elsewhere. Tell your Congressmen to support it. That's a start.
Would it be a help to the musicians if, say, the companies that produce MP3/whatever player software voluntarily put a little doojie in each program that would tally up the plays for a given song and send them to the equivalent of "Billboard"...and if concert venues used this information to book concerts and tours. If they're getting a lot of play, then people like them, and they be given the opportunity to do concerts based on that merit. It makes money for the band, money for the venue, and enjoyment for the audience. And it's based on an objective standard -- the number of times they're played. The exposure sites then would really be doing a good thing for the artists by letting them be seen, whether they SOLD anything or not. Maybe the "Billboard" thing could be a non-profit org on behalf of the artists, not a company that'll just end up being as greedy as any other. Let the artists go as high as how good they are will take them, I say. The money is in the concerts and tours, not the record sales. Not for the artists, at least. --- Rhi
+~+~+~+~+~+~+
All disagreements boil down to "my orgasm is bigger than your orgasm". -- Solomon Short