Hear, hear! The only reason Galactica is popular enough now for them to consider it in the first place was due to the original cast, most of whom are still alive, and (including the late John Colicos) appeared in the Galactica Second Coming trailer that Richard Hatch put together on credit card money and volunteer special effects. He's shown it at various conventions...I've seen it. It's an amazing piece of work. CGI cylons, Apollo going John Woo with a blaster in each hand, even a Star Wars-style holographic recording of the late Lorne Greene as Adama. If they'd just let Hatch remake the show, then we'd have a Galactica that all ages could enjoy.
But no. It's in fashion these days to "remake" old properties with no involvement whatsoever from anyone who was involved with the original. Pay lip service to the concept, drag it through the mud, and make it so crappy that neither the old fans nor new curious viewers have any interest in it. Bleah. This new show is just wrong. It's a blatant spit-in-the-face of Hatch, and of all the old-time fans who have been trying to get Hatch's show made.
Sure, Hatch might be a starry-eyed dreamer, but if it weren't for dreamers, nothing would ever get done. And you have to hand it to him...he's written the stories. Not Shatnerically ghost-written them. He has a lot of creativity, a lot of charisma...if only they would give him the reins.
I've heard that name before...
on
Half Mast
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· Score: 1
Huh. Is this the same Christopher Null who does movie reviews for FilmCritic.com. If so, I'll definitely have to check it out; I've quite enjoyed reading some of his movie reviews and would probably enjoy seeing what he does with a longer form.
I wouldn't say it's unethical behavior--just pretty annoying. But then, my state has an official Do Not Call list, and telemarketing companies--at least, the ones at which I've applied for positions so asked about it during the interview--are scrupulous about checking it. Because if they call someone who's on it, they get fined big-time.
Except that MCI pays about 33% more than fast food (which is a base rate; they have commissions and daily contests for extras), offers full-time positions where fast food often does not (because if they offered full-time, they'd have to provide benefits and such), and includes a pretty good benefits package.
Because the game Hack was named for a definition of the word "hack" that branched off well before "hacking" became synonymous with malicious computer activity.
The history of the word "hack" is detailed in this appendix that trace the word from its origin as a synonym of "goof" in the 1950s at MIT. It subsequently became used to describe explorations in off-limits tunnels under colleges (a practice that is satirized in Neal Stephenson's The Big U). Hmm, exploring forbidden tunnels...does this concept sound familiar?
(Subsequently, when the same students who hacked through tunnels found the new computer on campus, they gave birth to the more recent definition of "hack," involving messing around with computers. Then when journalists got ahold of the word, it took on its more malicious meaning.)
Note that the tax program TaxCut will import your last year's TurboTax files, if you still have them on your hard drive. And it's cheaper than TurboTax, and (IMHO) easier to use, too.
To my annoyance, they charge separately for e-filing Federal & State taxes (and they charge $2 more for filing state taxes than I actually would have gotten back!), but one can't have everything.
I don't pay for most of--well, as a matter of fact, any of the on-line magazines which I read. Wired News? Free. New York Times? Free. Springfield News-Leader (my local newspaper)? Free. CNN? Free. Google News? Free. Sci-Fi Channel? Free. Time? Free. Newsweek? Free. (I might someday subscribe to Pyramid, but that would be the exception.) People are used to getting on-line magazine editions free--that is, without paying money for them (demographic info and banner ads are another kettle of fish)--because in most cases, they're run as a loss leader/form of self-advertising by the publisher of a print paper/magazine, for which people are accustomed to paying.
Salon's problem is that people aren't customarily inclined to pay for ephemeral e-zines...especially when everyone else is giving theirs away.
I feel bad about losing Salon, since I do enjoy reading their tech section. But this has been coming for a long long time. At heart, they were basically just another dot-com the same as all the ones that went belly-up a few years back. They disguised their dot-comminess by trying to crank out a "product"--but the product was one that people were habitually accustomed to getting for free. Have any on-line magazines ever actually turned a profit on subscriptions? It didn't work for Slate; I dunno about Wall Street Journal (who charges) but I'd be inclined to guess that if they are, their reputation has a lot to do with it.
Fifty thousand more subscribers? Heh. Good luck, Salon. I'll miss you.
In case you haven't noticed, Wizards of the Coast is just about to release a whole new edition of D&D--or at least half of one. 3rd Revised, or 3.5th as it's come to be called. So everyone who shelled out for the PHB, DMG, and MM is going to have to buy them all over again.
You might consider setting up a BitTorrent tracker on your website, and making the files available that way. It's not any worse than website bandwidth, and since you're also leveraging the outbound bandwidth of sites that download the file, it could be faster.
Re:Phish already is doing this.. as well as others
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Instant Concert CDs?
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It's also worth noting that some of the bands that allow live taping have been recorded and traded in CD-quality by members of etree, and a lot of those recordings are being put up in lossless-compression formats on the audio section of Brewster Kahle's Archive.org site. Most of the ones there now are ones most folks wouldn't have heard of...but they have 28 Guster concerts, one of which I'm listening to right now. (They did have some Dave Matthews Band, but had to take it down after DMB changed their concert-trading policy.)
What I'm wondering is how Clearchannel's legit-bootlegs CD program will affect the bands like Guster that allow audience taping and trading of their shows.
Hey, why don't you contact the guy who runs the Scarywater Slashdot bittorrent mirror and have him torrent your file? You wouldn't need web space for it, just the upload capacity of your own computer for as long as it takes to completely upload it once, and more people would be able to get it.
Would you (or someone else) care to reencode it for us?:) I sure would like to be able to view it on my Linux box, but mplayer won't play it right and my box is slow enough that Crossover/Quicktime is unbearably jerky.
The interesting thing is not just the historical data, but the "metadata" from the way the thing is presented. These files are being shown--and narrated--to us by what appears to be an AI of some kind. I mean, it has a humanoid icon (patterned after Buddhist imagery, I think, though I could be mistaken) and a dulcet voice, not too emotional but not too flat either.
Can it be that Zion isn't just a stronghold for fighting against the Matrix, but a settlement where humans and artificially-intelligent machines have learned to live together in peace?
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.
Re:There are many reasons to pay.
on
Sim-Dud?
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· Score: 1
Er...what do you call that big banner ad that flashes at the top of the screen and changes every so often? Decoration?
Another problem is that a lot of the household drudgery--the things you could delegate to a maid, a gardener, or a home robot--are things you have to do yourself here. As a friend of mine put it, that right there immediately lessened the appeal of the thing. He didn't want to do those chores in real life, why should he pay $10 a month to do it?
The only real form of "competition" in the game (at least when I played it in beta) is affluence...having the nicest house with the most number of visitors, which brought in the highest income. But guess what? Thanks to the top ten lists, which could only list a finite number of places, the places with many visitors already were the ones that were most likely to get more! So the rich got richer, and the rest of the folks had to visit their houses to have fun.
And what's more, once you get a certain amount of money, what are you going to do with it? There's really not all that much stuff to buy after you get your house to the ultimate level of affluence. You don't even get the Hot Date/Vacation fun of going somewhere far away for a while.
I wonder if anyone's working on reverse-engineering the Sims Online server, so that folks who pick up the game cheap will have something to do with it if EA goes under.
Thanks. I managed to work that out, and compiled and ran it...the problem is, it's not a perfect patch. There are two audio streams involved in the movie: the matrix-code-and-chirping-letters sound of the opener, and then the music and voiceover for the anime. They're supposed to play one after the other...but instead, they play simultaneously. As a result, the movie is about 10 seconds out of sync with the sound.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear! The only reason Galactica is popular enough now for them to consider it in the first place was due to the original cast, most of whom are still alive, and (including the late John Colicos) appeared in the Galactica Second Coming trailer that Richard Hatch put together on credit card money and volunteer special effects. He's shown it at various conventions...I've seen it. It's an amazing piece of work. CGI cylons, Apollo going John Woo with a blaster in each hand, even a Star Wars-style holographic recording of the late Lorne Greene as Adama. If they'd just let Hatch remake the show, then we'd have a Galactica that all ages could enjoy.
But no. It's in fashion these days to "remake" old properties with no involvement whatsoever from anyone who was involved with the original. Pay lip service to the concept, drag it through the mud, and make it so crappy that neither the old fans nor new curious viewers have any interest in it. Bleah. This new show is just wrong. It's a blatant spit-in-the-face of Hatch, and of all the old-time fans who have been trying to get Hatch's show made.
Sure, Hatch might be a starry-eyed dreamer, but if it weren't for dreamers, nothing would ever get done. And you have to hand it to him...he's written the stories. Not Shatnerically ghost-written them. He has a lot of creativity, a lot of charisma...if only they would give him the reins.
Huh. Is this the same Christopher Null who does movie reviews for FilmCritic.com. If so, I'll definitely have to check it out; I've quite enjoyed reading some of his movie reviews and would probably enjoy seeing what he does with a longer form.
I wouldn't say it's unethical behavior--just pretty annoying. But then, my state has an official Do Not Call list, and telemarketing companies--at least, the ones at which I've applied for positions so asked about it during the interview--are scrupulous about checking it. Because if they call someone who's on it, they get fined big-time.
Except that MCI pays about 33% more than fast food (which is a base rate; they have commissions and daily contests for extras), offers full-time positions where fast food often does not (because if they offered full-time, they'd have to provide benefits and such), and includes a pretty good benefits package.
I'd say it's doubtful they decided to release it before it was written, as it was written way back in the early nineties.
Because the game Hack was named for a definition of the word "hack" that branched off well before "hacking" became synonymous with malicious computer activity.
The history of the word "hack" is detailed in this appendix that trace the word from its origin as a synonym of "goof" in the 1950s at MIT. It subsequently became used to describe explorations in off-limits tunnels under colleges (a practice that is satirized in Neal Stephenson's The Big U). Hmm, exploring forbidden tunnels...does this concept sound familiar?
(Subsequently, when the same students who hacked through tunnels found the new computer on campus, they gave birth to the more recent definition of "hack," involving messing around with computers. Then when journalists got ahold of the word, it took on its more malicious meaning.)
Note that the tax program TaxCut will import your last year's TurboTax files, if you still have them on your hard drive. And it's cheaper than TurboTax, and (IMHO) easier to use, too.
To my annoyance, they charge separately for e-filing Federal & State taxes (and they charge $2 more for filing state taxes than I actually would have gotten back!), but one can't have everything.
I don't pay for most of--well, as a matter of fact, any of the on-line magazines which I read. Wired News? Free. New York Times? Free. Springfield News-Leader (my local newspaper)? Free. CNN? Free. Google News? Free. Sci-Fi Channel? Free. Time? Free. Newsweek? Free. (I might someday subscribe to Pyramid, but that would be the exception.) People are used to getting on-line magazine editions free--that is, without paying money for them (demographic info and banner ads are another kettle of fish)--because in most cases, they're run as a loss leader/form of self-advertising by the publisher of a print paper/magazine, for which people are accustomed to paying.
Salon's problem is that people aren't customarily inclined to pay for ephemeral e-zines...especially when everyone else is giving theirs away.
I feel bad about losing Salon, since I do enjoy reading their tech section. But this has been coming for a long long time. At heart, they were basically just another dot-com the same as all the ones that went belly-up a few years back. They disguised their dot-comminess by trying to crank out a "product"--but the product was one that people were habitually accustomed to getting for free. Have any on-line magazines ever actually turned a profit on subscriptions? It didn't work for Slate; I dunno about Wall Street Journal (who charges) but I'd be inclined to guess that if they are, their reputation has a lot to do with it.
Fifty thousand more subscribers? Heh. Good luck, Salon. I'll miss you.
In case you haven't noticed, Wizards of the Coast is just about to release a whole new edition of D&D--or at least half of one. 3rd Revised, or 3.5th as it's come to be called. So everyone who shelled out for the PHB, DMG, and MM is going to have to buy them all over again.
Here's the most recent Wayback Machine cache of the story page. 2 years old, but better than nothing since the main page is slashdotted.
You might consider setting up a BitTorrent tracker on your website, and making the files available that way. It's not any worse than website bandwidth, and since you're also leveraging the outbound bandwidth of sites that download the file, it could be faster.
It's also worth noting that some of the bands that allow live taping have been recorded and traded in CD-quality by members of etree, and a lot of those recordings are being put up in lossless-compression formats on the audio section of Brewster Kahle's Archive.org site. Most of the ones there now are ones most folks wouldn't have heard of...but they have 28 Guster concerts, one of which I'm listening to right now. (They did have some Dave Matthews Band, but had to take it down after DMB changed their concert-trading policy.)
What I'm wondering is how Clearchannel's legit-bootlegs CD program will affect the bands like Guster that allow audience taping and trading of their shows.
Hey, why don't you contact the guy who runs the Scarywater Slashdot bittorrent mirror and have him torrent your file? You wouldn't need web space for it, just the upload capacity of your own computer for as long as it takes to completely upload it once, and more people would be able to get it.
"take the floor there."
It actually needs to be more like -10.25 seconds...but yeah, this works, sort of. But if I skip forward or backward, the sound loses sync again.
Can you put it on a webpage temporarily? I don't have an FTP server on my machine because it's a security hole.
If strictly necessary, I suppose I could create a temporary account and you could scp it in.
Either way, I'm capped upstream to 128 kilobits, so I can't host it to other people.
It would help me...I can't play it right now, except in Crossover/Quicktime, and that's a slide show. :(
Would you (or someone else) care to reencode it for us? :) I sure would like to be able to view it on my Linux box, but mplayer won't play it right and my box is slow enough that Crossover/Quicktime is unbearably jerky.
The interesting thing is not just the historical data, but the "metadata" from the way the thing is presented. These files are being shown--and narrated--to us by what appears to be an AI of some kind. I mean, it has a humanoid icon (patterned after Buddhist imagery, I think, though I could be mistaken) and a dulcet voice, not too emotional but not too flat either.
Can it be that Zion isn't just a stronghold for fighting against the Matrix, but a settlement where humans and artificially-intelligent machines have learned to live together in peace?
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.
Er...what do you call that big banner ad that flashes at the top of the screen and changes every so often? Decoration?
That's a big part of the problem, I think.
Another problem is that a lot of the household drudgery--the things you could delegate to a maid, a gardener, or a home robot--are things you have to do yourself here. As a friend of mine put it, that right there immediately lessened the appeal of the thing. He didn't want to do those chores in real life, why should he pay $10 a month to do it?
The only real form of "competition" in the game (at least when I played it in beta) is affluence...having the nicest house with the most number of visitors, which brought in the highest income. But guess what? Thanks to the top ten lists, which could only list a finite number of places, the places with many visitors already were the ones that were most likely to get more! So the rich got richer, and the rest of the folks had to visit their houses to have fun.
And what's more, once you get a certain amount of money, what are you going to do with it? There's really not all that much stuff to buy after you get your house to the ultimate level of affluence. You don't even get the Hot Date/Vacation fun of going somewhere far away for a while.
I wonder if anyone's working on reverse-engineering the Sims Online server, so that folks who pick up the game cheap will have something to do with it if EA goes under.
Thanks. I managed to work that out, and compiled and ran it...the problem is, it's not a perfect patch. There are two audio streams involved in the movie: the matrix-code-and-chirping-letters sound of the opener, and then the music and voiceover for the anime. They're supposed to play one after the other...but instead, they play simultaneously. As a result, the movie is about 10 seconds out of sync with the sound.
You do realize it's February not F ebruary, right?
Found this patch on the MPlayer-Users mailing list.
:)
Now, if someone could just tell me how to apply it...