Sliders, another FOX invention, had about 3 good seasons with the original cast of characters;
then John-Rhye Davies (aka Professor Arturo) left to be replaced by big-busted Kate Wohler; next season the actress played Wade left, replaced by the brother of the actor that played Quinn; the next season (this one strictly on the Sci-Fi channel), both of *them* left, replaced by two no-names, leaving only Remmy as the only original character during the last season (and in the end, he dies too!). I believe there was also significant behind-the-scenes direction changes (eg, Trace Torme, the main person behind the concept, leaving). The first season was great, but by the time we hit that last season, it was flopping around for it's last breath.
Of course, one can argue that MST3K fell into the trap, with all the changes between season 6 and 10, but since much of the creative talent was still on the show, it didn't suffer as badly (most people still argue that Joel was better than Mike in an infinite number of ways).
I look at how Sun has handled anyone releasing a
"Java" product (case in point, Java Invaders). Yes, Sun has asked for a change of name, with good explainations why, and I've yet to hear of anyone that doesn't change it. But the initial request is typically just a C no monetary damage, only threat of further legal action if they don't change it. This includes both free and commercial software projects.
Adobe does have the right to go after Illustrator names, but asking for cash as well as the destruction of the source code, the list of users and the profits that have been made on it is beyond stupidity.
Actually, the best of both worlds would be to have the ability to set things via command line OR environment variables OR by a settings file; in the cases where this is already done on unix, it's usually the case that variables are munged in in the following order of importance: command-line parameters > environment variables > config files > default values. Yes, this means that you have to parse 3 different sets of instructions, but using a structure like a hash to store these settings will make it easy to find which is the value the user wants.
The law basically says that if you opt-out of this sharing prior to July 1st, all data about you that that institution has, past and present, is protected. After July 1st, you can still opt-out, though it might require more than just a phone call, but only data *after* the date you opt-out is protected, all previous data is fair game, including data prior to July 1st.
In other words, *today* get on the phone and web sites and figure out how to get on the lists.
Note that this takes effect July 1st; *today* (June 29) is the last business day before then.
Remember, don't forget about the meteor shower yesterday night!
Fortunately, the bulk that I had to do all has 800 numbers that you called, and used an automated system to process everything. Only one (which I didn't have my customer # at the time) required an operator to complete.
...I was amazed first of all by how you can talk to a qualified Cisco tech immediately... we're talking an 800 number that you dial and within less than a minute you are talking to a technician...Instead he says, "OK, what's the login password?".... he says, "Sure, what's the config password?"...
Was anyone else waiting for the "*clickity-click* Wow, it looks like your entire root directory was deleted!" punchline?:-)
The only problem here is that, as an example, Ford could registere GM.sux, and then have a pro-Ford site siting there. And vice versa with Ford.sux and GM.
Instead, no commercial entity should be allowed to register T.sux, and specific rules are written that.sux sites must in regard to free speech (eg critism or commentary about company/trademark T), and that the site must not be used to generate significant profit for the owner (eg I can't start amazon.sux as an complete alternative bookstore, though I could use banner ads and/or small gift items like t-shirts and mugs that advertize the site itself.
If only the DVD would have the so-called Phantom Edit version; for those that haven't heard of this, it's basically a fan's cut of the film but otherwise unmodified that strips out the fluff, mostly JarJar and some pointless Anakin scenes.
For example, the entire underwater scene from the JarJar's city to the other side of the planet is gone.
As it was covered in the Chicago Tribune a few days ago, I remember the the critic gave it a 1/4 star less than the 3.5 stars that the untouched version had; the edit was much more refined and moved well, but lacked some of the magic that the original had. Rumor has it that Lucas has seen this, and while not allowing it to be distributed publicly, acknowledges that it's a good edit, but not as good as his original vision.
By all accounts, XBOX the company had every right to the XBOX name, and beyond tossing as much money as they could at XBOX, MS could do nothing about it legally. I would have loved to see XBOX hold rock solid against MS, and watch the antics as the MS engine rapidly tried to pull another name from it's magical hat, probably hurting both their PR value and market value as the next generation of consoles comes out this Christmas. But even I would be daunted by having probably millions pushed in my face just to change the company name.
I really hope that this does well, if only to help tell Disney that animation need not be rated-G, contain 200 million songs, and have annoying but cutsy comic relief. The right use of animation will set up a world that is impractical to do with live action, but can come alive with animation. For example, some of the last few Dinsey films, such as Hunchback, Pocahontas, and Mulan, had mostly humans and realistic settings, and could have easily been done by live actors. On the other hand, you could not do Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, or Atlantis, without a major major special effects budget.
While I did not see Titan AE, I did see WB's "The Iron Giant", which takes the attitude and approach of this film one step further with a few more deeper insights (eg nuke war) without candy coating it. It got snubbed at the theaters, mostly due to poor advertizing by WB.
What I thought was most impressive here was that people did die from violent actions as well as a few 'monstrosities' as determined lately by Disney. For example, the communcations lady was smoking most of the time; Disney has taken some liberal edits in the past to cut out all references to smoking in some of their films from the 60s released to VHS today. Given the attitude of late of "won't someone think of the children!" this was a nice thing to see that they are facing up the realities of the genre.
The other thing that I liked was that there was humor, not forced, and in some cases rather subtle. It's not a laugh-riot throughout like "Emporer's New Groove", but it certainly helps to liven up some of the slower parts. And the humor is not just kiddie-stuff; there's some that will put a smile on adults' faces as well.
Overall, it's not a waste of $5-$8 (depending on when you see it), at least to see how Disney tackles 'serious animation'. However, because of Shrek's early appearence in the summer, I suspect this will barely break even (it doesn't have the repeat viewing for kids as Lion King did), and will probably have Disney revert back to the Song and Dance animation that people typically expect.
Except that most likely, the tank is no long 500 feet away from you but somewhere else.
To start any fire you need three things: enough flammable material, oxygen, and a spark. When you shoot the gas can, which has probably a good amount of air above the liquid, you give it ignition from the heat of the bullet and air, and voom.
With the compressed gas, there's no air inside the tank, so puncutering the side of it will only cause the gas to be released. However, if you now lit up that existing gas stream (with another well placed shot, for example), you might get a nice flame out the side, but the gas will be moving so fast that the flame cannot get inside the tank. But the key here is that that gas IS moving so fast as to have a significant amount of kinetic energy that the tank will basically become a missile to provide the reaction to the gas's action. And this is the inherient danger of a hydrogen-storage fuel cell system; if you crash your car as to rupture the 'gas tank', you'll create a possibly worst hazard by flying sharpnel (which can hurt others around), as opposed to just igniting your car (and hurting only yourself).
There is one wrench that this case has stuck in the works: the fact that Yahoo does operate a physical site in France for its French-based services. This is why the French court was able to place such a restriction in the first place.
However, I do believe that the French court cannot control what Yahoo does on it's non-French servers, nor force Yahoo to block French users from using certain parts of them.
If this was, say, America_Only_Auctions.com, which has no physical presence outside of the US, I would figure that the French court could have very little say in affecting how that site operated, and much less so, the company having gotten to the point of having to defend its practices in the US court.
I do argue that if you are multinational, you'd better be smart enough to know the local laws and alter your content if you have country-specific versions. But if your country A version doesn't meet the legal standards of country B, too bad for country B.
Besides the issues of changing the meaning of a page by inserting their own hotlinks, another possible effect is that MS can effectively track people on the web without the users even visiting the MS family of sites. For example, MS XP might have the word "Slashdot" become a hyperlink that links to "www.slashdot.org"; however, it's just as easy for them to make the link as "www.microsoft.com/routing.pl?url=www.slashdot.org ", and since you'd be using IE which sends valid Referrer tags, MS can effectively track your progress through the web without you knowning about it.
What they need to get rid of is:
- "fanboy" writing (dear God - let us forget the TV movie! The horror! The horror!)
Unfortunately, given the way the BBC DW novels have been written, the BBC is concidering the TV movie as canon; the TARDIS has been whacked up like that, and McGann's Doctor is officially #8 (The whole human thing, however, has been cleverly skirted by the multitude of writers). Even the DW novel series that was done by Virgin (the BBC taken the license back to them in 96) was subtly tied into the series, with a novel that took place 'right' before the movie events and explaining why the TARDIS looks as it did now), as well as one novel after the movie.
So *if* we ever get another DW show or movie, remember that the events of the FOX one already are in the BBC stone.
This audio drama most likely takes place at some point after "Survival" (the last TV episode), and before the movie itself; doubtful that the effects
of that movie will be noticed here.
I've read that Pixar basically created two versions of Toy Story 1 & 2, and a Bug's Life; one meant for wide screen and one meant for 4:3 aspect ratios. Pretty much, the only change between the two was that in shots in widescreen which would have cut out key actors in the edges when pan&scanning to 4:3, they simply moved them into shot more, and thus avoiding any short of p&s. This only happened on a limited number of scenes, so they didn't have to completely regenerate the entire movie.
The entire mess of the DNS system has become so fscked up that it almost seems to me that we need to completely remove what we have and start over, implementing rules that we now know that we need. In particular: forcing the use of country codes, declaring given domains as either "trademark areas" or "non-commercial areas" where trademarks cannot be contested, respecting first come-first served, avoiding artificial scarsity in the (now) second-level domains, and well written rules for any possible arbitration in the 'trademark' areas.
Mind you, there does need to be some sane bit of transition: I would allow anyone with existing.com,.net or whatever to maintain those domains, but now under the right country code, and with the stipulation that they may be charged with trademark violations if appropriate, or they can transfer their domain to a non-trademark area.
Of course, this probably goes over about as well as a dead duck.
At least, if it is happening from US gov't sites after June 25, 2001, you can sue them. Thanks to Section 508, any federal web site that is publically accessible must meet many guidelines, including access for disabled people; the divisions whose sites are not compliant by this point without sufficient reason to not be compliant can be sued by the public or have displinary action taken by other parts of the gov't. This includes not locking out browsers (including text-based ones).
Re:Before you dismiss this out of 'hand' . . .
on
KDE Gesture Control
·
· Score: 2
There are a large number of deaf people that cannot speak clearly due to the fact that they don't know what sounds they are supposed to make with their mouth; they use ASL to communicate both ways ('listening' and 'speaking'). Because of this, they are very agile in ASL, and can 'speak' much faster than typing, particular since most common english words are a single gesture instead of spelt out. So for those in that situation, give them these gloves, a portable linux device, and pipe the output of the glove interpretation program into a text-to-speech program, and, tada, these people now have the ability to 'talk' to any audience, deaf or non-deaf.
This is true; people are trying to develop, for example, cat converter material that uses only common metals; this usually isn't a problem for catalytic material. The concern I'd have here is that we're looking at pure atomic Ru, and it's very hard to mimic the purely atomic properties by using other elements. Maybe alloys or the like, which have the same amount of atoms, but only a fraction of them being Ru, will have the same effect.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, one can argue that MST3K fell into the trap, with all the changes between season 6 and 10, but since much of the creative talent was still on the show, it didn't suffer as badly (most people still argue that Joel was better than Mike in an infinite number of ways).
Adobe does have the right to go after Illustrator names, but asking for cash as well as the destruction of the source code, the list of users and the profits that have been made on it is beyond stupidity.
Meguesses some lawyer not understanding of this concept of "free (as in beer) software"...
"You're watching FOX ... shame on you!"
In other words, *today* get on the phone and web sites and figure out how to get on the lists.
Fortunately, the bulk that I had to do all has 800 numbers that you called, and used an automated system to process everything. Only one (which I didn't have my customer # at the time) required an operator to complete.
Was anyone else waiting for the "*clickity-click* Wow, it looks like your entire root directory was deleted!" punchline? :-)
</joke>
Instead, no commercial entity should be allowed to register T.sux, and specific rules are written that .sux sites must in regard to free speech (eg critism or commentary about company/trademark T), and that the site must not be used to generate significant profit for the owner (eg I can't start amazon.sux as an complete alternative bookstore, though I could use banner ads and/or small gift items like t-shirts and mugs that advertize the site itself.
There's also the Abyss, with the release version and the director's cut (various scenes relating to world tension that were cut throughout the film).
As it was covered in the Chicago Tribune a few days ago, I remember the the critic gave it a 1/4 star less than the 3.5 stars that the untouched version had; the edit was much more refined and moved well, but lacked some of the magic that the original had. Rumor has it that Lucas has seen this, and while not allowing it to be distributed publicly, acknowledges that it's a good edit, but not as good as his original vision.
"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO ME!"
While I did not see Titan AE, I did see WB's "The Iron Giant", which takes the attitude and approach of this film one step further with a few more deeper insights (eg nuke war) without candy coating it. It got snubbed at the theaters, mostly due to poor advertizing by WB.
What I thought was most impressive here was that people did die from violent actions as well as a few 'monstrosities' as determined lately by Disney. For example, the communcations lady was smoking most of the time; Disney has taken some liberal edits in the past to cut out all references to smoking in some of their films from the 60s released to VHS today. Given the attitude of late of "won't someone think of the children!" this was a nice thing to see that they are facing up the realities of the genre.
The other thing that I liked was that there was humor, not forced, and in some cases rather subtle. It's not a laugh-riot throughout like "Emporer's New Groove", but it certainly helps to liven up some of the slower parts. And the humor is not just kiddie-stuff; there's some that will put a smile on adults' faces as well.
Overall, it's not a waste of $5-$8 (depending on when you see it), at least to see how Disney tackles 'serious animation'. However, because of Shrek's early appearence in the summer, I suspect this will barely break even (it doesn't have the repeat viewing for kids as Lion King did), and will probably have Disney revert back to the Song and Dance animation that people typically expect.
To start any fire you need three things: enough flammable material, oxygen, and a spark. When you shoot the gas can, which has probably a good amount of air above the liquid, you give it ignition from the heat of the bullet and air, and voom.
With the compressed gas, there's no air inside the tank, so puncutering the side of it will only cause the gas to be released. However, if you now lit up that existing gas stream (with another well placed shot, for example), you might get a nice flame out the side, but the gas will be moving so fast that the flame cannot get inside the tank. But the key here is that that gas IS moving so fast as to have a significant amount of kinetic energy that the tank will basically become a missile to provide the reaction to the gas's action. And this is the inherient danger of a hydrogen-storage fuel cell system; if you crash your car as to rupture the 'gas tank', you'll create a possibly worst hazard by flying sharpnel (which can hurt others around), as opposed to just igniting your car (and hurting only yourself).
If this was, say, America_Only_Auctions.com, which has no physical presence outside of the US, I would figure that the French court could have very little say in affecting how that site operated, and much less so, the company having gotten to the point of having to defend its practices in the US court.
I do argue that if you are multinational, you'd better be smart enough to know the local laws and alter your content if you have country-specific versions. But if your country A version doesn't meet the legal standards of country B, too bad for country B.
Unfortunately, given the way the BBC DW novels have been written, the BBC is concidering the TV movie as canon; the TARDIS has been whacked up like that, and McGann's Doctor is officially #8 (The whole human thing, however, has been cleverly skirted by the multitude of writers). Even the DW novel series that was done by Virgin (the BBC taken the license back to them in 96) was subtly tied into the series, with a novel that took place 'right' before the movie events and explaining why the TARDIS looks as it did now), as well as one novel after the movie.
So *if* we ever get another DW show or movie, remember that the events of the FOX one already are in the BBC stone.
This audio drama most likely takes place at some point after "Survival" (the last TV episode), and before the movie itself; doubtful that the effects of that movie will be noticed here.
Of course, this probably goes over about as well as a dead duck.
This is true; people are trying to develop, for example, cat converter material that uses only common metals; this usually isn't a problem for catalytic material. The concern I'd have here is that we're looking at pure atomic Ru, and it's very hard to mimic the purely atomic properties by using other elements. Maybe alloys or the like, which have the same amount of atoms, but only a fraction of them being Ru, will have the same effect.