Now if only Warner Bros. Pictures would stop throwing hissy fits about classic WB cartoon shorts that have entered the public domain showing up on YouTube. Almost every Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon short made before 1948 entered the public domain because of copyright technicalities not followed by Associated Artists Productions in the 1950s. However, Time-Warner raised a ruckus about their presence on the site, and YouTube pulled all of them. Copyright has been renewed on the versions of the shorts that were restored for the cartoon DVDs. However, the original versions of the shorts are still in the public domain. Oh well, some of them are still up on Archive.Org.
I have to respectfully disagree. "Very good" based on what grounds? He wore threatening make-up? I mean that's the only way I could tell he was bad. He had practically 0 dialog and his character was puddle shallow. Yeah he looked menacing... and that was it.
Ah, but you forget Ray Park's Superior Kung Fu.(tm) I would have liked to see more Hong Kong-influenced choreography and maybe even wirework in the "Duel of the Fates" but that was basically the raison d'etre for the film. That one fight scene with Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul was the reason for Episode I's existence. They could have the crucial scenes as flashbacks in Episode II and throw the rest of the bits in the trash.
How would you make room in Episode II? You get rid of all the lame romantic scenes between Padme and Anakin, that's how! Padme and Anakin's romance could have been compressed into a couple of scenes. The important bits in Episode II were the revelation of Sifo-Dyas' relationship with the Kamino Corporation and their clone project, the turning of Count Dooku from the Light to Dark Side, the battles on Geonosis, and the beginning of the Clone Wars.
However, those elements wouldn't make a whole movie, would they? So you take all those elements and make them flashbacks in Episode III!
To wit: you could have done a single sequel to the Original Trilogy. It would be a long-ass movie but the Lord Of The Rings trilogy proved that people will sit through a long-ass movie if it's good enough. You could even reach back into the history of film and plan an intermission in the middle of the movie! Ever seen the "road show" versions of some of the epic movies of the '50s and '60s? They inevitably have a 30 minute intermission. Complete with onscreen countdown. Composers would even write *music* for that countdown.
So yeah: the whole Prequel Trilogy could have been Episode III with flashbacks from the material that was in Episodes I and II. Call it the ueber-Phantom Edit. The effort to recut all three movies into one would mean no room for Jar-Jar, no room for the lame pseudo-romantic crap, no room for the palace intrigue. It would be the rise of Darth Sidious, the fall of Anakin Skywalker, and the ruin of the Jedi. All killer, no filler.
Guardians of Order filed for bankruptcy. They are no more. BESM 3rd Edition has been bought by another company. I am hoping they will release the TriStat DX system as an open gaming system. There are free-as-in-beer PDFs of TriStat, true, but it would be great if it could be licensed in a similar way to D20 so that anyone can put out TriStat games.
Nothing says "enlightenment" like a statue of a meditating Siddhartha Gautama Buddha with the word "Hollywood" inscribed in his robes. Next time I'm down that way I'll see if the Mold-A-Rama machine that made it is still in working order. Ommmmmmmm.....
I'll wait until I see some good stuff from Lenovo (or until IBM makes a PowerPad).
Umm...IBM DID make PowerPC ThinkPads. However, you cannot run Mac OS on one of these babies. It's strictly AIX, OS/2 and an ancient version of Windows NT. Oh, and Linux may or may not work. Insufficient info after Google search...anyone know about this?
It takes a knockin' and keeps on rockin'. Blueberry Clamshell 300MHz...it's been around the world with its original owner (my aunt) and has lived to tell the tale. Very happily running Panther like a champ. The stupid Yo-Yo power supply is misbehaving now but everyone knows that was a real design botch. Yeah, it's not the most masculine lappie on the planet. However, it's not as bad as the pinklappies that some of the PC makers are starting to put out "for the girls."
Between my Clamshell and my ThinkPad 600x I am in laptop heaven. Once the bugs are worked out of the MacBook that's probably what I'll be getting next.
...wasn't delivered or in any way feature Samuel L. Jackson.
It's the scene where a smug asshole goes to take a leak, and is musing to himself about his penis size. (This character is definitely the target audience for all those p3-n15_E3nlaargmt spams you see.) He winds up tinkling on a great big viper. The viper leaps and grabs hold of his crotchal region.
"FUCKING SNAKE!!! GET OFF MY DICK!!!" he screams before succumbing to the venom. That's gotta be a more useful phrase than "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane."
Yeah, I thought it was a whole lot of fun too. It would have become a DVD classic if it had been released without the hype...one of those movies people discover at the DVD store. As it is we still haven't heard from the rest of the world with regard to SoaP. Don't count it out just yet. It will make back the money it cost to film the thing and then some.
Sounds like a Baaaaad day was had by all. Especially the goat that got mauled. Although truth be told, it was not a domestic goat but a wild Alpine Ibex.
You know all those Warner and Fleischer cartoons that have been sold for years on crappy VHS tapes at the local 99 Cent Only store? Guess what. Warner gets pissy about some of their later cartoons being posted to YouTube, and then YouTube pulls EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Even the cartoons that entered the public domain.
YouTube seems to be deathly afraid of suffering the same fate as the old Napster so they have been very quick to pull stuff. They also have a "three strikes" policy about copyright infringement. Three videos get cashiered for possible copyright infringement and your account gets pulled.
John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren & Stimpy, had his YouTube account pulled because he posted short snippets of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons that had passed into the public domain.
...is the choice of model. The 600 series Thinkpad, released at the height of the Dot-Com Boom, has got to be the epitome of Thinkpad-dom. It was light, (5 pounds!) it was versatile, it could run as a "3 spindle machine" (HD, Optical and Floppy) if you put the Floppy Drive in an external case that connected to a proprietary connector by a cable. During the Dot-Com Boom, the 600 series Thinkpad was a status symbol. It was the laptop the Big Dogs carried, unless they were Mac fans in which case they'd have a "Wallstreet" PowerBook.
The 600 series was the first to have official instructions on the IBM website on how to install Linux. (Red Hat, for the curious.) There was always a problem with the quirky sound chip, and it took IBM years to put out a driver (F/OSS, to their credit) for the MWave modem chip. Red Hat actually "certified" the 600 series Thinkpad, in spite of those problems.
The 600 "DNA" was transfered to the T series of Thinkpads, a series still in continued manufacture by Lenovo. Whether the T60 is a worthy member of the line is something the jury's still out on, but the T4x series remain classics.
Yes, the 700C was first. The 701C with its "butterfly keyboard" had more panache, and might have been a better choice for the Thinkpad niche. But the 600 series would have been the best choice of all, because it's the beginning of a continuum of perhaps the "best of the best" of the whole line.
Back in the days of the original iMacs, iBooks and the Blue-and-White/Graphite minitowers, everyone bagged on Apple for building "Fisher-Price" computers out of that thick ABS you used to only see on toys. Guess what? Those machines wore like iron. My iBook and my Blue-And-White were both purchased in 1999. Guess what? They are still 100% functional and run modern Mac OS X. I also was able to acquire a third-generation iMac from around the same era. Aside from a couple of pen marks, it was pristine.
And the thing about Apple is that the inside of these machines are just as good as the outside. The Apple Minitower design that was only phased out in favor of the aluminum "cheese grater" minitower was amazing. You unlatch one of the sides and pull it down, and you are inside the machine. No stupid sheet metal slidy doors or inverse-u shaped cowlings that are a bitch to tear down and even more of a bitch to replace right. And the parts used are good, sane parts. Not "hacked by Chinese" crap. You don't hear about explodey caps or random shorts with regard to these old machines. Yeah, you hear about explodey batteries on laptops, but let's face it, everyone except IBM has had problems with LiIon batteries, and I'm waiting for the reports of burning Thinkpads that I know will eventually come.
Apple builds to last with good solid parts and also by patronizing good facilities. Foxconn, ASUS, they don't deal with the Elitegroups of the world. If a top-tier Asian facility is unavailable, Apple has its own factories run to their standards.
Hell, people still use Mac SE30s after all these years. Why? They are BUILT.
"Technological Thret" is an 1988 animated short directed by Bill Kroyer. It centers around the introduction of an office robot that rolls around on a single ball in the bottom of its structure. One of the interesting little details about the short was that the robots were first animated in a computer, then rotoscoped in 2D to fit with the rest of the 2D short. The bot in the short didn't look *that much* like the Ballbot, but just enough to bring it to mind.
OK, so it was the 386 that was t3h l33t. And AT class machines were the workhorse. Sorry about that gaffe. I wasn't entirely sure when I wrote about that...should have done a bit more checking before pressing "submit."
You are a fighter with the "Tribulation Force" in New York City during the Antichrist's reign. You have a mission: convert heathen Gothamites. If you can't convert 'em, kill 'em all and let Jeebus sort 'em out. Oh yeah, you can play as an agent of the Antichrist if you want to.
This is not a joke. This is real. And it will be out in time for Xmas.
Slashdot Mirror
USB Turntable. Welcome to 2006.
"It's the warmth of vinyl, man! It's got a richer tone!" -- Trent Lane, Daria, "That Was Then, This Is Dumb."
"Spaceballs" was released as a two-sided DVD. Same deal, 4:3 on one side, 16:9 on the other. That was MGM which is now part of the Sony octopus.
Now if only Warner Bros. Pictures would stop throwing hissy fits about classic WB cartoon shorts that have entered the public domain showing up on YouTube. Almost every Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon short made before 1948 entered the public domain because of copyright technicalities not followed by Associated Artists Productions in the 1950s. However, Time-Warner raised a ruckus about their presence on the site, and YouTube pulled all of them. Copyright has been renewed on the versions of the shorts that were restored for the cartoon DVDs. However, the original versions of the shorts are still in the public domain. Oh well, some of them are still up on Archive.Org.
WNT is to VMS what HAL is to IBM. QED.
I have to respectfully disagree. "Very good" based on what grounds? He wore threatening make-up? I mean that's the only way I could tell he was bad. He had practically 0 dialog and his character was puddle shallow. Yeah he looked menacing... and that was it.
Ah, but you forget Ray Park's Superior Kung Fu.(tm) I would have liked to see more Hong Kong-influenced choreography and maybe even wirework in the "Duel of the Fates" but that was basically the raison d'etre for the film. That one fight scene with Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul was the reason for Episode I's existence. They could have the crucial scenes as flashbacks in Episode II and throw the rest of the bits in the trash.
How would you make room in Episode II? You get rid of all the lame romantic scenes between Padme and Anakin, that's how! Padme and Anakin's romance could have been compressed into a couple of scenes. The important bits in Episode II were the revelation of Sifo-Dyas' relationship with the Kamino Corporation and their clone project, the turning of Count Dooku from the Light to Dark Side, the battles on Geonosis, and the beginning of the Clone Wars.
However, those elements wouldn't make a whole movie, would they? So you take all those elements and make them flashbacks in Episode III!
To wit: you could have done a single sequel to the Original Trilogy. It would be a long-ass movie but the Lord Of The Rings trilogy proved that people will sit through a long-ass movie if it's good enough. You could even reach back into the history of film and plan an intermission in the middle of the movie! Ever seen the "road show" versions of some of the epic movies of the '50s and '60s? They inevitably have a 30 minute intermission. Complete with onscreen countdown. Composers would even write *music* for that countdown.
So yeah: the whole Prequel Trilogy could have been Episode III with flashbacks from the material that was in Episodes I and II. Call it the ueber-Phantom Edit. The effort to recut all three movies into one would mean no room for Jar-Jar, no room for the lame pseudo-romantic crap, no room for the palace intrigue. It would be the rise of Darth Sidious, the fall of Anakin Skywalker, and the ruin of the Jedi. All killer, no filler.
Someone needs to do this.
Guardians of Order filed for bankruptcy. They are no more. BESM 3rd Edition has been bought by another company. I am hoping they will release the TriStat DX system as an open gaming system. There are free-as-in-beer PDFs of TriStat, true, but it would be great if it could be licensed in a similar way to D20 so that anyone can put out TriStat games.
Sic transit gloria mundi...
...he does prefer them female and attractive. Why anyone would put a request about this here on Slashdot is a mystery to me.
...the obligatory "So why don't they just use .OGG/.FLAC" comment? Oops.
Nothing says "enlightenment" like a statue of a meditating Siddhartha Gautama Buddha with the word "Hollywood" inscribed in his robes. Next time I'm down that way I'll see if the Mold-A-Rama machine that made it is still in working order. Ommmmmmmm.....
I'll wait until I see some good stuff from Lenovo (or until IBM makes a PowerPad).
Umm...IBM DID make PowerPC ThinkPads. However, you cannot run Mac OS on one of these babies. It's strictly AIX, OS/2 and an ancient version of Windows NT. Oh, and Linux may or may not work. Insufficient info after Google search...anyone know about this?
It takes a knockin' and keeps on rockin'. Blueberry Clamshell 300MHz...it's been around the world with its original owner (my aunt) and has lived to tell the tale. Very happily running Panther like a champ. The stupid Yo-Yo power supply is misbehaving now but everyone knows that was a real design botch. Yeah, it's not the most masculine lappie on the planet. However, it's not as bad as the pink lappies that some of the PC makers are starting to put out "for the girls."
Between my Clamshell and my ThinkPad 600x I am in laptop heaven. Once the bugs are worked out of the MacBook that's probably what I'll be getting next.
Wow, someone needs to get laid around here don't they? Slashdot...the sound of a million hands fapping.
...wasn't delivered or in any way feature Samuel L. Jackson.
It's the scene where a smug asshole goes to take a leak, and is musing to himself about his penis size. (This character is definitely the target audience for all those p3-n15_E3nlaargmt spams you see.) He winds up tinkling on a great big viper. The viper leaps and grabs hold of his crotchal region.
"FUCKING SNAKE!!! GET OFF MY DICK!!!" he screams before succumbing to the venom. That's gotta be a more useful phrase than "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane."
Yeah, I thought it was a whole lot of fun too. It would have become a DVD classic if it had been released without the hype...one of those movies people discover at the DVD store. As it is we still haven't heard from the rest of the world with regard to SoaP. Don't count it out just yet. It will make back the money it cost to film the thing and then some.
Sounds like a Baaaaad day was had by all. Especially the goat that got mauled. Although truth be told, it was not a domestic goat but a wild Alpine Ibex.
Or Daria, for that matter. :P
I know that Tool is very protective of their content, and you can't find their music/videos on iTunes, Yahoo! Music, or anything else.
Looks like Fred Stuhr's two videos for Tool are still up: Sober, and Prison Sex.
God I miss him. Freaking genius.
Mystery solved.
...even when they are technically public domain.
You know all those Warner and Fleischer cartoons that have been sold for years on crappy VHS tapes at the local 99 Cent Only store? Guess what. Warner gets pissy about some of their later cartoons being posted to YouTube, and then YouTube pulls EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Even the cartoons that entered the public domain.
YouTube seems to be deathly afraid of suffering the same fate as the old Napster so they have been very quick to pull stuff. They also have a "three strikes" policy about copyright infringement. Three videos get cashiered for possible copyright infringement and your account gets pulled.
John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren & Stimpy, had his YouTube account pulled because he posted short snippets of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons that had passed into the public domain.
This a "best of" list, not a "godawful worst of" list.
I had a PC 5150 in 1987. It was a castoff from my uncle's CPA practice. Damn fine machine.
...is the choice of model. The 600 series Thinkpad, released at the height of the Dot-Com Boom, has got to be the epitome of Thinkpad-dom. It was light, (5 pounds!) it was versatile, it could run as a "3 spindle machine" (HD, Optical and Floppy) if you put the Floppy Drive in an external case that connected to a proprietary connector by a cable. During the Dot-Com Boom, the 600 series Thinkpad was a status symbol. It was the laptop the Big Dogs carried, unless they were Mac fans in which case they'd have a "Wallstreet" PowerBook.
The 600 series was the first to have official instructions on the IBM website on how to install Linux. (Red Hat, for the curious.) There was always a problem with the quirky sound chip, and it took IBM years to put out a driver (F/OSS, to their credit) for the MWave modem chip. Red Hat actually "certified" the 600 series Thinkpad, in spite of those problems.
The 600 "DNA" was transfered to the T series of Thinkpads, a series still in continued manufacture by Lenovo. Whether the T60 is a worthy member of the line is something the jury's still out on, but the T4x series remain classics.
Yes, the 700C was first. The 701C with its "butterfly keyboard" had more panache, and might have been a better choice for the Thinkpad niche. But the 600 series would have been the best choice of all, because it's the beginning of a continuum of perhaps the "best of the best" of the whole line.
Back in the days of the original iMacs, iBooks and the Blue-and-White/Graphite minitowers, everyone bagged on Apple for building "Fisher-Price" computers out of that thick ABS you used to only see on toys. Guess what? Those machines wore like iron. My iBook and my Blue-And-White were both purchased in 1999. Guess what? They are still 100% functional and run modern Mac OS X. I also was able to acquire a third-generation iMac from around the same era. Aside from a couple of pen marks, it was pristine.
And the thing about Apple is that the inside of these machines are just as good as the outside. The Apple Minitower design that was only phased out in favor of the aluminum "cheese grater" minitower was amazing. You unlatch one of the sides and pull it down, and you are inside the machine. No stupid sheet metal slidy doors or inverse-u shaped cowlings that are a bitch to tear down and even more of a bitch to replace right. And the parts used are good, sane parts. Not "hacked by Chinese" crap. You don't hear about explodey caps or random shorts with regard to these old machines. Yeah, you hear about explodey batteries on laptops, but let's face it, everyone except IBM has had problems with LiIon batteries, and I'm waiting for the reports of burning Thinkpads that I know will eventually come.
Apple builds to last with good solid parts and also by patronizing good facilities. Foxconn, ASUS, they don't deal with the Elitegroups of the world. If a top-tier Asian facility is unavailable, Apple has its own factories run to their standards.
Hell, people still use Mac SE30s after all these years. Why? They are BUILT.
"Technological Thret" is an 1988 animated short directed by Bill Kroyer. It centers around the introduction of an office robot that rolls around on a single ball in the bottom of its structure. One of the interesting little details about the short was that the robots were first animated in a computer, then rotoscoped in 2D to fit with the rest of the 2D short. The bot in the short didn't look *that much* like the Ballbot, but just enough to bring it to mind.
OK, so it was the 386 that was t3h l33t. And AT class machines were the workhorse. Sorry about that gaffe. I wasn't entirely sure when I wrote about that...should have done a bit more checking before pressing "submit."
It's not exactly the Bible but it's based on an interpretation of Revelation:
Left Behind: Eternal Forces.
You are a fighter with the "Tribulation Force" in New York City during the Antichrist's reign. You have a mission: convert heathen Gothamites. If you can't convert 'em, kill 'em all and let Jeebus sort 'em out. Oh yeah, you can play as an agent of the Antichrist if you want to.
This is not a joke. This is real. And it will be out in time for Xmas.