I'm under the impression from the press release that Best Brains is just ceasing production, and not that SFC is cancelling the series.
Maybe they're just tired of doing it, or feel they need a break. Maybe we'll get the spin-off series, MST3K: 2001 =)
I'd love for the show to go on and I think that USA Network or TBS or TNT would be perfect for it. But it doesn't matter if the push to do it isn't there from the creators.
It's been a while since I visited those sites, but check through a search engine for MST3K tape trading. There are a couple of sites which specialize in bringing traders together.
There might even be a link somewhere in the links section of the site this story references.
In the meantime, go to your local video store and buy the videos, or better yet: the DVD of the movie.
There already are a bunch of web versions. They're called, generally, MiSTings and range from USENET posts to full-blown movie scripts to bad fan-fics and others.
There are also web page parodies as someone else mentioned, but I don't know if I'd necessarily call them MSTings, unless there are some I've not seen. I know the Weird Al fans have spoofed a bunch.
-Augie, Weird Al fan, but not a spoofer
Sci-Fi Shot that show in the foot
on
MST3K Cancelled
·
· Score: 1
I loved a lot of the sci-fi movies. I especially like the 80s ones, but that's just me reliving my childhood.
Look - the sf-only clause was a hell of a lot better than the No More Episodes we would have been stuck with otherwise. And I still say some of the SF shows will rank right up there with the best of the CC shows.
Losing Trace was a bad blow and I didn't much care for many of the host segments on SF, but I watched the show for the movies, and not the interstitial segments. On that basis the show was still damned good.
It ran for a pretty long time, though. What did we get -- something close to ten seasons of bad movies?
-Augie, hasn't had time to watch it much lately but still enjoyed it
I've been running Mandrake 5.2 now for a little more than a month -- without it I'd still be 100% Windows. Now I'm about a 10% Windows user. Definitely worth it. I just pre-ordered it from CheapBytes who say they should have it available next week sometime. Definitely worth it if your connection doesn't allow you to download it. -Augie
Doesn't anyone want to complain about how Slashdot is obviously starting some sort of mailing list with this information? They're offering 50 prizes to get thousands of names and addresses, which they will no doubt then turn around and sell to the highest bidder, by placing all those stickers on one long roll of toilet paper. They don't even have to retype all the info!
This is on a par with the lunacy of Intel's new chips.
That's it -- let's boycott!
-Augie
P.S. Yes, this was all done tongue in cheek. The pass would make a nice birthday present, since my b-day is March 3. But I'm not flying out to California, thanks. =)
CSI now has regular user addresses, too. I'm not sure what the current policy is, but last I checked you get issued the octal address automatically and can then go to a forum to get your 'normal' address.
I, too, have fond memories of Q-Link. When I first got my C=64 modem back in 1986, I became a member. Only lasted 2 months, as the bill I incurred the second month was about a year's worth of allowance.;-) (What can I say? I was 10 at the time.) I stuck with local BBS's instead after that.
I used to be a big ASCII art practitioner on there, back before it was called ASCII art. Even got to host a couple of trivia chats. Downloaded lots of great software and games. All of this with a 1200 baud modem stuck in the back of the keyboard!
Ah, the memories. . .
Are there any Q-Link fanweb sites around? I remember seeing screen shots off of an emulator once, but that's about it. I wonder if AOL remembers the big Q. =)
And that's probably why I only browse at CompUSA. I've never really needed tech support there. When I need that, I go to the Internet these days and make up my own mind. It's worked so far.
Actually, come to think of it, I bought my computer at CompUSA almost three years ago. The salesman was friendly, but very used car dealer-like. Thankfully, I had done my homework ahead of time, and this time around I'm ordering one off the 'net from Gateway or Dell or Micron.
Anyway, I wonder which CompUSA Jon went to. . . I'm in Northern NJ, and I'm familiar with three of them in the area.
For one, does anyone in journalism have any sense of creativity at all?!? Or is it in their writer's guidelines that any story mentioning comic books or super-heroes must start with "Wham!" or "Bang" or "Zap"?!?
Secondly, Stan Lee has created other new characters in the past thirty years. For one, he created RAVAGE 2099. Now, he might not wish to take credit for it, but it was his creation. (John Byrne didn't approve of the name "Ravage" for a hero and so left the project, amongst other reasons. His quote at the time was something along the lines of "Would you want your daughter to be dating some guy named 'Ravage'?")
No, those characters wouldn't be owned by Marvel. Marvel may be many things but it's not Disney.
Disney has the clause in the contracts they force animators to sign which says ANYTHING an animator creates while working under the pervasive Disney influence is owned by Disney, even stuff created on personal time.
Unless his contract states the same, I doubt Marvel could lay claim. Marvel can only lay claim to the characters that they publish under a work-for-hire system that all freelancers agree to, with special exceptions, such as the Epic line.
Interestingly for this web site, Cerebus creator Dave Sim works closest to the open source credo as one is going to find in comicdom. If his creative partner, Gerhard, were to leave the Cerebus book, Sim has said Gerhard would be well within his rights to publish a Cerebus comic all his own. And let the better book win.
I'm using Linux-Mandrake, which defaults to KDE. On the start-up (login) screen, it has an option as to what window manager you wish to start off in. So I'm sure it wouldn't be a big problem to incorporate that in. It's a handy program, too, in that it has an icon for all the users on the system so you can click on yourself rather than typing your name in, in case you're really lazy.;-)
KDE is just wonderfully simple to use and learn and add onto and configure.
I like its file directory program a lot better than Midnight Express, although it does have its occasional problem. (Like when I want to look at a directory's file listings -- if there's an index.htm file, that's all that appears and not the file listing. I have to look for a solution on that one.)
But everything is integrated really well. It's easy to look at, it comes with its own flavor of all the programs you'd need to get started with a computer.
I'll probably give GNOME a test when 1.0 comes out, but until then KDE is what saved Linux for me.
Your points are good, though. I just wouldn't get the book for my own purposes. Maybe as a SysAdmin it would be helpful, but is that who the book is aimed for? I flipped through it at the store when I saw it once and it seemed aimed more towards the end-user.
I don't know. I understand that Spam sets a bad precedent and uses up valuable bandwidth, but I found a simple solution a long time ago: I just delete it, unread. The subject lines are pretty obvious. And even when they aren't and I read one by mistake, I just delete it. No harm.
Thankfully, I've never gotten any really long spams which would require excessive time to download. Maybe that would change my mind.
In the end, I believe in the "goodness" of the net and like to make it easier for people to find me, by keeping my real e-mail address in newsgroup postings and my web site.
Nope, I've got the Toshiba 2008. Not a single artifact yet. I believe they're second-generation now. They don't have composite video output (but they do have SVHS output) and no DTS output, but who wants that? DTS is a stupid move, anyway, if you ask me.
It's a bare-bones player, but it plays the discs well, as far as I'm concerned.
-Augie, swears by his Toshiba 2008 and Creative Labs PC-DVD (which can be had for $200 if you're really on a budget and have room in your computer and are running Windows, too.)
Yes, the article is generally very good, very factual. But they insist on continuing the usual geek/nerd/hacker stereotype, which always ends up negative. The geek must be "pasty-skinned" so as to imply s/he never sees the light of day. (I don't know for sure, but was that store appearance mentioned in the article done in the middle of the summer, when people would easily get tans?) And the picture they use of Linus makes him out to look like a cross between Bill Gates and Steven King. I've seen plenty of decent pictures of him where he looks like an "average Joe," but that wouldn't fit Newsweek's intended image of him as a nerdy dweeb.
I've not ventured into the world of MP3s just yet, but it seems to make perfect financial and creative sense to me. These days, the artists have to pay the record company for the production and promotion of the albums they produce. That's often why they go on tour for years at a time, city after city after sity: Those concerts are where they make their money -- not in album sales.
So if you can eliminated the costs of production that the artist has to pay, the artist can then tour less if they wish to (thus allowing them to write less songs about hotels and airplanes, which should only be considered a bonus), make more money, and be more creative. Their fans can get the music in a decent format. Hell, they can get the music today off of a radio if they don't mind putting up with the cassette tape quality off-the-air.
And putting together compilation CDs - while definitely not my thing - would allow more artists to share in the riches.
I don't see why CDs need to cost more than $10 or $12, at the most, and if you can eliminate some of their necessity and make money off more of them from the net, with lower overhead, you might be able to lower the prices, too.
I think. I'm no econ expert. Part of me wants to scream out that if the CDs aren't being mass-produced, then they'll cost more per item.
That being said, I don't want this whole "MP3 Revolution" to signal the end of the record store. I still enjoy wandering into those to browse and pick up the occasional CD.
Or to sum up all of this in more OSS-centric terms: The music should be free, but the artists not. Pay to see the artists. But use the music as their advertisement, I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm under the impression from the press release that Best Brains is just ceasing production, and not that SFC is cancelling the series.
Maybe they're just tired of doing it, or feel they need a break. Maybe we'll get the spin-off series, MST3K: 2001 =)
I'd love for the show to go on and I think that USA Network or TBS or TNT would be perfect for it. But it doesn't matter if the push to do it isn't there from the creators.
-Augie
It's been a while since I visited those sites, but check through a search engine for MST3K tape trading. There are a couple of sites which specialize in bringing traders together.
There might even be a link somewhere in the links section of the site this story references.
In the meantime, go to your local video store and buy the videos, or better yet: the DVD of the movie.
-Augie
There already are a bunch of web versions. They're called, generally, MiSTings and range from USENET posts to full-blown movie scripts to bad fan-fics and others.
There are also web page parodies as someone else mentioned, but I don't know if I'd necessarily call them MSTings, unless there are some I've not seen. I know the Weird Al fans have spoofed a bunch.
-Augie, Weird Al fan, but not a spoofer
I loved a lot of the sci-fi movies. I especially like the 80s ones, but that's just me reliving my childhood.
Look - the sf-only clause was a hell of a lot better than the No More Episodes we would have been stuck with otherwise. And I still say some of the SF shows will rank right up there with the best of the CC shows.
Losing Trace was a bad blow and I didn't much care for many of the host segments on SF, but I watched the show for the movies, and not the interstitial segments. On that basis the show was still damned good.
It ran for a pretty long time, though. What did we get -- something close to ten seasons of bad movies?
-Augie, hasn't had time to watch it much lately but still enjoyed it
I've been running Mandrake 5.2 now for a little more than a month -- without it I'd still be 100% Windows. Now I'm about a 10% Windows user. Definitely worth it. I just pre-ordered it from CheapBytes who say they should have it available next week sometime. Definitely worth it if your connection doesn't allow you to download it. -Augie
Doesn't anyone want to complain about how Slashdot is obviously starting some sort of mailing list with this information? They're offering 50 prizes to get thousands of names and addresses, which they will no doubt then turn around and sell to the highest bidder, by placing all those stickers on one long roll of toilet paper. They don't even have to retype all the info!
This is on a par with the lunacy of Intel's new chips.
That's it -- let's boycott!
-Augie
P.S. Yes, this was all done tongue in cheek. The pass would make a nice birthday present, since my b-day is March 3. But I'm not flying out to California, thanks. =)
CSI now has regular user addresses, too. I'm not sure what the current policy is, but last I checked you get issued the octal address automatically and can then go to a forum to get your 'normal' address.
;-) (What can I say? I was 10 at the time.) I stuck with local BBS's instead after that.
I, too, have fond memories of Q-Link. When I first got my C=64 modem back in 1986, I became a member. Only lasted 2 months, as the bill I incurred the second month was about a year's worth of allowance.
I used to be a big ASCII art practitioner on there, back before it was called ASCII art. Even got to host a couple of trivia chats. Downloaded lots of great software and games. All of this with a 1200 baud modem stuck in the back of the keyboard!
Ah, the memories. . .
Are there any Q-Link fanweb sites around? I remember seeing screen shots off of an emulator once, but that's about it. I wonder if AOL remembers the big Q. =)
-Augie
And that's probably why I only browse at CompUSA. I've never really needed tech support there. When I need that, I go to the Internet these days and make up my own mind. It's worked so far.
Actually, come to think of it, I bought my computer at CompUSA almost three years ago. The salesman was friendly, but very used car dealer-like. Thankfully, I had done my homework ahead of time, and this time around I'm ordering one off the 'net from Gateway or Dell or Micron.
Anyway, I wonder which CompUSA Jon went to. . . I'm in Northern NJ, and I'm familiar with three of them in the area.
-Augie, done rambling now
For one, does anyone in journalism have any sense of creativity at all?!? Or is it in their writer's guidelines that any story mentioning comic books or super-heroes must start with "Wham!" or "Bang" or "Zap"?!?
Secondly, Stan Lee has created other new characters in the past thirty years. For one, he created RAVAGE 2099. Now, he might not wish to take credit for it, but it was his creation. (John Byrne didn't approve of the name "Ravage" for a hero and so left the project, amongst other reasons. His quote at the time was something along the lines of "Would you want your daughter to be dating some guy named 'Ravage'?")
-Augie
No, those characters wouldn't be owned by Marvel. Marvel may be many things but it's not Disney.
Disney has the clause in the contracts they force animators to sign which says ANYTHING an animator creates while working under the pervasive Disney influence is owned by Disney, even stuff created on personal time.
Unless his contract states the same, I doubt Marvel could lay claim. Marvel can only lay claim to the characters that they publish under a work-for-hire system that all freelancers agree to, with special exceptions, such as the Epic line.
Interestingly for this web site, Cerebus creator Dave Sim works closest to the open source credo as one is going to find in comicdom. If his creative partner, Gerhard, were to leave the Cerebus book, Sim has said Gerhard would be well within his rights to publish a Cerebus comic all his own. And let the better book win.
-Augie
I'm using Linux-Mandrake, which defaults to KDE. On the start-up (login) screen, it has an option as to what window manager you wish to start off in. So I'm sure it wouldn't be a big problem to incorporate that in. It's a handy program, too, in that it has an icon for all the users on the system so you can click on yourself rather than typing your name in, in case you're really lazy. ;-)
-Augie, fast turning into a KDE Evangelist
KDE is just wonderfully simple to use and learn and add onto and configure.
I like its file directory program a lot better than Midnight Express, although it does have its occasional problem. (Like when I want to look at a directory's file listings -- if there's an index.htm file, that's all that appears and not the file listing. I have to look for a solution on that one.)
But everything is integrated really well. It's easy to look at, it comes with its own flavor of all the programs you'd need to get started with a computer.
I'll probably give GNOME a test when 1.0 comes out, but until then KDE is what saved Linux for me.
-Augie
Yup, that is an end-user POV.
Your points are good, though. I just wouldn't get the book for my own purposes. Maybe as a SysAdmin it would be helpful, but is that who the book is aimed for? I flipped through it at the store when I saw it once and it seemed aimed more towards the end-user.
-Augie
I don't know. I understand that Spam sets a bad precedent and uses up valuable bandwidth, but I found a simple solution a long time ago: I just delete it, unread. The subject lines are pretty obvious. And even when they aren't and I read one by mistake, I just delete it. No harm.
Thankfully, I've never gotten any really long spams which would require excessive time to download. Maybe that would change my mind.
In the end, I believe in the "goodness" of the net and like to make it easier for people to find me, by keeping my real e-mail address in newsgroup postings and my web site.
-Augie
Nope, I've got the Toshiba 2008. Not a single artifact yet. I believe they're second-generation now. They don't have composite video output (but they do have SVHS output) and no DTS output, but who wants that? DTS is a stupid move, anyway, if you ask me.
It's a bare-bones player, but it plays the discs well, as far as I'm concerned.
-Augie, swears by his Toshiba 2008 and Creative Labs PC-DVD (which can be had for $200 if you're really on a budget and have room in your computer and are running Windows, too.)
Yes, the article is generally very good, very factual. But they insist on continuing the usual geek/nerd/hacker stereotype, which always ends up negative. The geek must be "pasty-skinned" so as to imply s/he never sees the light of day. (I don't know for sure, but was that store appearance mentioned in the article done in the middle of the summer, when people would easily get tans?) And the picture they use of Linus makes him out to look like a cross between Bill Gates and Steven King. I've seen plenty of decent pictures of him where he looks like an "average Joe," but that wouldn't fit Newsweek's intended image of him as a nerdy dweeb.
::sigh::
Will the madness never end?
-Augie
I've not ventured into the world of MP3s just yet, but it seems to make perfect financial and creative sense to me. These days, the artists have to pay the record company for the production and promotion of the albums they produce. That's often why they go on tour for years at a time, city after city after sity: Those concerts are where they make their money -- not in album sales.
So if you can eliminated the costs of production that the artist has to pay, the artist can then tour less if they wish to (thus allowing them to write less songs about hotels and airplanes, which should only be considered a bonus), make more money, and be more creative. Their fans can get the music in a decent format. Hell, they can get the music today off of a radio if they don't mind putting up with the cassette tape quality off-the-air.
And putting together compilation CDs - while definitely not my thing - would allow more artists to share in the riches.
I don't see why CDs need to cost more than $10 or $12, at the most, and if you can eliminate some of their necessity and make money off more of them from the net, with lower overhead, you might be able to lower the prices, too.
I think. I'm no econ expert. Part of me wants to scream out that if the CDs aren't being mass-produced, then they'll cost more per item.
That being said, I don't want this whole "MP3 Revolution" to signal the end of the record store. I still enjoy wandering into those to browse and pick up the occasional CD.
Or to sum up all of this in more OSS-centric terms: The music should be free, but the artists not. Pay to see the artists. But use the music as their advertisement, I suppose.
-Augie, hoping any of this made sense